Egypt's Islamist Authority blasts ISIS organ harvesting

Egypt's religious authority issued a fatwa stating that ripping out human organs from a live captive to transplant them in another body is prohibited, whether or not it endangers someone's life.

By MAAYAN GROISMAN
ISIS operative decapitates a young boy (photo credit: ARAB MEDIA)
ISIS operative decapitates a young boy
(photo credit: ARAB MEDIA)
Dar al-Ifta, Egypt's official religious institution tasked with drafting edicts, issued a fatwa according to which human organ harvesting is "a violation of Sharia," the London-based daily Arab newspaper a-Sharq al-Awasat reported on Sunday.
According to the edict, issued on Saturday, ripping out human organs from a live captive to transplant them in another body is prohibited, whether or not it endangers someone's life.
While ISIS has long argued that Sharia permit harvesting organs of "apostate captives" to save Muslims' lives, even if doing so would lead to captives' death, an Egyptian cleric told a-Sharq al-Awasat: "It is only allowed to harvest organs from a dead body, since a live person is better than a dead one."
"Threatening to attack them with weapons, ISIS rips out parts of its hostages' bodies in order to use them for organ trafficking, and not in order to plant them in Muslims' bodies, as the organization claims."
The fatwa states that: "Harvesting someone's organs, whether he is a Muslim or not, amounts to his humiliation. Committing organ transplantation in a way that leads to the death of the body from which the organs were ripped contradicts the Sharia, even if the person killed deserves to die and even if the one who killed him is a righteous person."
"How could it be if the person killed was held as a hostage by ISIS, the Khawarij (deviants)?" Egyptian clerics wonder.
A document issued by ISIS Religious Authority that was obtained by Reuters in December revealed the terrorist group endorsed the harvesting of organs from live prisoners in order to save the lives of Muslims.
According to ISIS, "the apostate's life and organs don’t have to be respected and may be taken with impunity."